There was a place where a hazel had keeled over between two clapped-out rhododendrons, sheltered from the wind but not from the sun. We sat. I took Rachel’s hand and lay back, thinking that there was a lot to be said for going without sleep, letting the rays boil up images on my closed eyelids, toying parenthetically with the idea of telling Rachel I loved her. The setting was good. Girls never minded so long as you pressed for no reply. Enjoy the moment a moment longer.
I opened my eyes and let them swim around, declining to focus them on the curled leaves and blades of grass.
‘Come and look here. There’s a sort of hollow in the bush where I used to come and smoke fags when I was young.’
I stood up, walked forward, and knelt to part the foliage and branches. Rachel looked over my shoulder. Inside the tent of leaves we saw: beer bottles, a tin can, trodden newspaper, grey tissues, shrivelled condoms like dead baby jellyfish.
Rachel groaned.
‘Popular spot,’ I said. I let go of her hand when I straightened up. She followed me as we started back to the house.
Early evening. On the sitting-room sofa, we lay snogging, as teenagers will. Very mild stuff, on the whole. Occasionally, of course, I would go all sinewy and urgent in her arms, or halt her in mid-sentence with a (probably absurd) demonic glare. I, for one, was beginning to find it a bit unreal – but what could a poor boy do ?
So. Let me describe the way DeForest looked when he came in.
There was the noise of a car. The oldsters’ return? We separated, not far. The front knocker sounded and we heard someone go to answer it. A tap on the sitting-room door preceded DeForest’s entry. He gave a smile of furtive recognition and came over towards the sofa, all the time staring straight at the mantelpiece, as if tolerantly giving us time to get dressed. I remember I almost let out a shriek of terrified laughter when I noticed he was wearing plus-fours.
No one spoke.
Still staring at the mantelpiece, DeForest lowered himself on to the edge of an armchair, little feet together, hands on lap. I glanced at Rachel, as if to say, Is it all right if I hide under the sofa until he goes ? Then, DeForest put his head in his hands for perhaps five seconds, took it out again, and looked up at Rachel: mischievous but ashamed, like a schoolboy caught stealing.
‘What is it?’ Rachel asked in a frightened voice.
‘Are you okay?’ I joined in. ‘Can I get you anything?’
A brave child can bear anything but commiseration, and DeForest’s tiny square head jerked backwards suddenly and his chest trembled, searching for air. He started to cry.
Rachel moved forwards and knelt in front of him, her breasts on his thighs, her arm round his knees, her free hand stroking his face and hair.
‘DeForest, DeForest, shsh, shshsh, DeForest, shshsh,’ she whispered.
Incredulously I suggested out loud to myself: ‘I’ll go into the kitchen.’
Ten minutes later Rachel followed me. I asked how DeForest was and Rachel said he was all right now. She said she thought she had better go back to London with him. I said I wished she wouldn’t do that. She said she had to.
As a juke-box turntable moves along the row of upright records before picking one out, so I prowled my mind’s filing cabinets. But all I said in the end was, staring into space:
‘Oh no. I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to walk out of here in a minute and I’ll never see you again.’
Who can say how I got through the weekend? My heart really goes out to me there.
Charles listened to the car drive away and walked up the stairs like a senile heavyweight. ‘Seven o’clock,’ his watch told him. In the master bedroom he rifled through drawers, examining bottles of pills. Back in the sitting-room, he washed down a fistful of hypnotics with a quarter of lukewarm vodka. He complained to the mirror that this only made him feel worse.